Homemade recordings - NOT amateur radio

When still at school, i.e. a very long time ago, a friend and I made some homemade records using a big horn, lots of shouting and the plastic lids of coffee jars.

Looking back, these were very exciting days. Although I still have a record, I no longer have a means of playing it.

As we have moved increasingly to digital and streaming, analogue decks are fewer, although some still swear by vinyl records. As I recall there was nothing too profound recorded.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/record

Recording the last hours on 500kHz?

Back in the late 1940s G5UM and others recorded the last few hours of operation on the old 56MHz (5m) band on an old 78rpm disc. Sadly this disc and copies of it appear to be lost forever.

I am very much hoping that a few stations in the UK and Eire will record the last hours on the 500kHz band which is being withdrawn on Dec 31st for ever, to be replaced by 472-479kHz.  Such recordings are a valuable piece of amateur radio history which will be treasured in years to come.  It would be a pleasure to pull such recordings together for posterity, but I shall be unable to listen myself because I'll not have access to the shack at that time.

If YOU can listen between 2300-2400GMT on Dec 31st and make a few recordings of the CW activity, please send me copies and I will produce a CD or MP3 file of them all.

Homemade 45rpm disc recording

Handmade disc recording made on a coffee tin plastic lid

Whilst clearing out a cupboard the other day I chanced upon a piece of my history in the form of a small 45rpm disc recording that an old school friend and I made in 1969. Using an old record turntable with a very large horn as the acoustic microphone we recorded me saying some words and poems onto the polypropylene lid of an old coffee jar. Shouting VERY loudly, the sound is imprinted onto the disc in just the same way old gramophone records were made back in the 1800s. The metal foil inner lids of cocoa tins were also quite good for this as I recall. Francis Wood, my school friend went the whole hog and put the record into a homemade sleeve (with suitable handwritten text) with inner cover and the disc finally inside. I did play this disc some years ago and it was still intelligible (just) but nowadays I have no 45/78rpm kit to play it on. I remember the first time we made such a disc back in 1962 how amazed I was that it worked.

SAQ (17.2kHz VLF) reception

This link takes you to a recording of SAQ on 17.2kHz as heard by M0LMH in IO93 square.  It is quite strong when the signal starts. I listened on the Dutch online SDR and SAQ was not as strong there as I would have expected at 1600z. This is a recording of SAQ in Connecticut USA made by Jay W1VD earlier today.